Let’s walk it through. Some suburbanite who gets hot by playing with guns buys a bunch of revolvers and semi-automatic weapons. <sarc>Clearly the man relies on them for hunting purposes to feed his family.</sarc> Then a bad person comes and burgles his home, not only depriving him of a means of feeding his family the blown-apart carcasses of squirrels, bunnies and skunks but also giving said bad person the ability to generate some good old American gun mayhem.

But James, you say, Suburban Gun Idiots have the right to purchase guns!

Let me put it to you this way. I support a heck of a lot of rights. I support your legal right to do a lot of lame-assed idiot things, like own a bunch of lethal weapons you don’t need. Sometimes exercising your rights (cavalierly or to excess) not only makes the world a more dangerous place, but makes you a micro-cephalic ass clown.

If that sounds harsh, just think how harsh it might be to look down the barrel of a gun stolen from some Mattapoisettian home while you’re being victimized on the streets of New Bedford.

I refuse to tone down my language when it comes to this type of idiocy. Rights come with responsibilities. Often, there are natural consequences. But in the case of stolen weapons like these, someone else is paying for the fetish of the Suburban Gun Idiot. Will SGI be held at all responsible for his poorly protected arsenal, now in the hands of criminals?

I, myself, find it convenient to hunt deer with an AK-47. It's so handy to shoot dotted lines into the deer, thereby killing it _and_ carving it at the same time (or "dressing" it, to use the hunting vernacular).

If you use enough bullets, you'll have meat the consistency of hamburger, thus eliminating that messy process from your home.

I like the idea of having legal requirements for gun storage. If a gun is stolen that was not secured, there should be consequences. Like jail time. That is not going to hurt responsible gun owners. So, the NRA should have no problem with it, right?

I like the idea of having legal requirements for gun storage. If a gun is stolen that was not secured, there should be consequences. Like jail time. That is not going to hurt responsible gun owners. So, the NRA should have no problem with it, right?

It sounds nice to me, simply because I think it is irresponsible to collect guns at all, but I don't think it would be workable.

Guns should be locked up of course, but if someone broke into your house, they're not going to be stopped by your gun cabinet. So what can you do?

I suppose you could require that guns be kept in a safe, but that defeats the purpose of owning a gun for home defense. The homeowner needs to have access to the weapon.

As much as I hate guns and disapprove of people collecting them as if they were collecting bottlecaps or comic books, I don't think you can hold someone responsible if their gun is stolen unless it can be proven they were grossly negligent (as in, I left my gun sitting on my stoop while I went in to get another Schlitz.)

Such a thing, I think, would be difficult to prove unless the owner just admits it... which isn't going to happen if he knows there's legal repercussions.